• Director(s):

    HUCHET (JEAN-YVES)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE GEIE, HIKARI FILMS

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2016

  • Language(s):

    German, French

  • Rights:

    TV, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET

Chernobyl, the worst civil nuclear disaster of all time, has left a 3,600km2 no-go zone – an area the size of Luxemburg – in the heart of Ukraine. A no-go zone but not a dead zone.

Nature has repossessed the area - trees are destroying the abandoned buildings, and wild animals are multiplying endlessly. Man has made a cautious return, to manage the zone and to continue decontamination work on the destroyed reactor - with dosimeters and carefully calculated exposure times, to avoid joining the ranks of the 80,000 lives the accident claimed, 30 years ago.
 
But it is also a strange land of women survivors from another era: aging grandmothers who have chosen to return home, to tend to their gardens and to rear poultry without worrying about the radioactivity.
 
A small world, presented to us by videomaker and amateur rocker Igor. He lost a beloved uncle in the disaster but it has not made him bitter: he is an employee on the site, which according to the most optimistic scientists, will cease to be radioactive in 24,000 years’ time.